Crossmodal object-based attention: auditory objects affect visual processing

According to the object-based view, visual attention can be deployed to "objects" or perceptual units, regardless of spatial locations. Recently, however, the notion of object has also been extended to the auditory domain, with some authors suggesting possible interactions between visual and auditory objects. Here we show that task-irrelevant auditory objects may affect the deployment of visual attention, providing evidence that crossmodal links can also occur at an object-based level. Hence, in addition to the well documented control of visual objects over what we hear, our findings demonstrate that, in some cases, auditory objects can affect visual processing.     

THE PATIENT'S OBJECTS IN THE ANALYST'S MIND

In every analysis, the analyst develops an internal relationship with the patient's objects—that is, the people in the patient's life and mind. Sometimes these figures can inhabit the analyst's mind as a source of data, but at other times, the analyst may feel preoccupied with or even invaded by them. The author presents two clinical cases: one in which the seeming absence of a good object in the patient's mind made the analyst hesitate to proceed with an analysis, and another in which the patient's preoccupation with a “bad” object was shared and mirrored by the analyst's own inner preoccupation with the object. The use and experience of these two objects by the analyst are discussed with particular attention to the countertransference.     

PROBLEMS OF INTERNALIZATION: A BUTTON IS A BUTTON IS—NOT

Analysts hope to help the patient internalize a relationship with the analyst that contrasts with the original archaic object relation. In this paper, the author describes particular difficulties in working with a patient whose defenses and anxieties were bulimic, her movement toward internalization inevitably undone. Several issues are considered: how does the nonsymbolizing patient come to internalize the analyst's understanding, and when this does not hold, what is the nature of the patient's subsequent methods of dispersal? When the patient can maintain connection to the analyst as a good object, even fleetingly, in the depressive position, the possibility of internalization and symbolic communication is increased.     

To whom does the unconscious belong? The interface between the private and the social dimension in psychotherapy practice

This paper explores how ‘the social unconscious’, namely the influence of society and politics, impacts upon clinical thinking and practice. The author argues that insufficient attention is paid to the influence of the psychosocial dimension and there is a methodological awkwardness in knowing how to conceptualize it. Furthermore it is argued that psychodynamic practice, with its emphasis on the exploration of the individual psyche, tends to disregard social engagement as a criterion of mental health.

Three clinical examples are cited to demonstrate how the influence of politics and society can enter the psychotherapeutic dialogue. A methodology is then proposed using Bion's formulations about binocular vision, to examine the patient-therapist pair from the perspective of a small work group in society.     

Why read Fairbairn?

The author offers a close reading of portions of Fairbairn's work in which he not only explicates and clarifies Fairbairn's thinking, but generates ideas of his own by developing concepts that he believes to be implicit in, or logical extensions of, Fairbairn's work. Among the unstated or underdeveloped aspects of Fairbairn's contribution that the author discusses are (1) the idea that the formation of the internal object world is always, in part, a response to trauma (actual failure on the part of the mother to convey to her infant a sense that she loves him and accepts his love); (2) the notion that the infant's unceasing efforts to transform the internalized relationship with the unloving mother into a loving relationship – thus reversing the effect on his mother of his (imagined) 'toxic love'– is the single most important motivation sustaining the structure of the internal object world; and (3) the idea that attacks on oneself for the way one loves, while self-destructive, contain a glimmer of insight into one's own self-hatred and shame regarding one's endless, futile attempts to change oneself (or the rejecting object) into a different person. The author, using his own clinical work, illustrates the way he makes use of his understanding of the 'emotional life' of internal objects to facilitate the patient's emotional growth.     

类别学习和分类运用的神经机制

从类别学习和分类运用(包括非人类对象分类和社会分类)两个方面阐述了分类的神经机制。类别学习主要与新皮层、内侧颞叶、基底神经节、中脑多巴胺能系统有关, 不同类别的学习会激活这些神经系统间不同的连接。对非人类对象分类时, 不同类型、级别、熟悉度及相似度类别分类的神经机制不同, 分类对象的清晰度、类别不确定性会影响分类的神经机制, 在分类进程的不同时段会出现对应的ERP指标。社会分类时个体先注意到外群体再加工内群体, 且对内群体的加工更深, P200和N200是对内、外群体区分的特异性波, 内外群体分类时, 内群体激活梭状回和扣带回后部, 外群体激活杏仁核。文章最后比较了人类和灵长类动物分类神经机制的异同, 并指出社会分类和非人类对象分类神经机制的整合以及人类和灵长类动物分类神经机制的比较是今后研究需要关注的问题。     

环境伦理学中的道德客体与正义取向

本文尝试通过分析现今较为流行的几种环境伦理观倡导的环境义务对象及其理论根据,指出其合理因素和缺陷所在,进而提出价值共同体的概念,以此阐明人类在环境义务对象上的多样性和复杂性,并提出一种兼顾多层次对象的环境正义观。     

Unconscious phantasy: Some historical and conceptual dimensions

This paper seeks firstly to grasp both conceptually and historically the different phenomenologies that are captured by the term ‘Unconscious Phantasy’. The term is shown to refer to a number of distinct though overlapping conceptual domains. These include: phantasy as scene, phantasy as representation of drive, phantasy as representation of wish as its fulfilment, phantasy as split off activity of the mind functioning under the aegis of the pleasure principle; phantasy as representation of the minds own activities (which Wollheim calls’ the way “the mind represents its own activities to itself’’). Lastly unconscious phantasy is understood as being the basic foundation of all mental life, including drives, impulses, all anxiety situations and defences. Having mapped out this territory through following the development of the concept in the work of Freud and Klein, the author draws on the work of the philosopher Richard Wollheim who, the author contends, has made a fundamental contribution to our conceptual understanding of unconscious phantasy. In the last section of the paper, the author draws a distinction between what he terms ‘objects’ (namely psychic objects) and what he terms ‘facts’. It is suggested that this distinction, though implicit in much of our work, benefits from being made explicit and that in so doing an important dimension of analytic work is illuminated. We aim to help the patient to discover what he is like, to understand the ways in which he conceives and misconceives himself, to unravel the fact‐ness of himself and his world from its ‘object qualities’, to differentiate between unconscious phantasy and reality.     

A place within the heart: finding a home with parental objects

For adopted and Looked After children with compromised early experiences, there can be troubling phantasies and anxieties associated with parental objects. These internal object relations can seriously restrict the development of secure intimate relationships with new parental figures. Adoptive parents and foster carers bear the brunt of the associated difficulties. Clinical work with the child, parents/carers, family, or network, may help processes of containment, differentiation, working through, mourning, and integration. This paper is based on thinking derived from clinical work with children who are adopted or Looked After, and with adoptive parental couples, carers, and networks. The primary focus is on how the child needs to find a ‘psychic home’ in the minds of others for their damaged internal parental objects, and the emotional capacities required in adoptive parents to provide this. I describe some of the complexities for adoptive parents and others in providing what is needed to enable the child to experience their internal parental objects in a fuller way. This process can allow the child to introject, identify with, and re-imagine their internal parental objects, and through this develop a more realistic relationship to their adoptive parents and to their birth parents. It promotes trust, freedom, and emotional depth in the relationship with parental figures.     

Dummett and Frege on sense and Selbständigkeit

As part of his attack on Frege’s ‘myth’ that senses reside in the third realm, Dummett alleges that Frege’s view that all objects are selbständig (‘self-subsistent’, ‘independent’) is an underlying mistake, since some objects depend upon others. Whatever the merits of Dummett’s other arguments against Frege’s conception of sense, this objection fails. First, Frege’s view that senses are third-realm entities is not traceable to his view that all objects are selbständig. Second, while Frege recognizes that there are objects that are dependent upon other objects, he does not take this to compromise the Selbständigkeit of any objects. Thus, Frege’s doctrine that objects are selbständig does not make the claim of absolute independence that Dummett appears to have taken it to make. Nevertheless, in order to make a good case against Frege based on the dependency of senses, Dummett need only establish his claim that senses depend upon expressions: appeal to an absolute conception of independence is unnecessary. However, Dummett’s arguments for the dependency of senses upon expressions are unsuccessful and they show that Dummett’s conception of what it is to be an expression also differs significantly from Frege’s.